Quick Update

Wow, it pains me to see this blog languishing. We're in crunch mode this week to release the first beta to our internal team to bash on. I'm having to work late for the first time since joining this team a few months ago (which is probably unusual here-- that it's taken so long to work late, not that I'm doing it :).

Anyways, we're all getting our components together to play together, and it's very exciting seeing the workflow take a submission and put it through the paces. Tomorrow was supposed to be the internal release date, but we're pushing it to Monday... and there are still some serious gaps that we will need to address.

I also had a big meeting with some of the content providers. That went well... in that it raised some of those serious gaps that we need to fix before rolling everything out. Overall they liked it, but because of the size of their submissions (hundreds of files), they had some concerns about the site's scalability. Next week I hope to have a few mockups of how we can change things for them.

On Thursday there will be a "Bug Bash," which is an official timespan that everyone is asked to spend a few minutes trying to crash the application. We should get a lot of good feedback then; it's been a bit hard finding time to get feedback from everyone.

On a personal front, my wife's van was destroyed (the timing belt snapped, ruining the engine). So... tomorrow, while in crunch mode, I'll have to take some time off to go look for a replacement vehicle with her (she needs a vehicle before I can take off on a trip I've had planned to visit a highschool buddy for his 30th birthday this weekend). I sent out mail explaining the situation, and the awesome thing is how supportive the PMs are for me and my wife. Here's a couple verbatim quotes from email:

"Life happens Tom. You take care of your family!!

"
and
"Tom, you’ve done an incredible job this week and we completely understand that life calls at inconvenient times! We’ll be thinking positive thoughts for you!

"

I work at one of the best places imaginable. :)

Tom out! And have a good weekend. Next week we'll find out how the bug bash went, the second contributer's meeting, and the internal deployment of all our pieces.